


Until the Sun Sets on Nobody

by flyingwide



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Blasphemy, But He Gets Better, Canon-Typical Violence, Consensual Violence, Don't Try This At Home, First Time, Love Confessions, M/M, Past Character Death, Semi-Consensual Murder, So It Goes, Spit As Lube, Temporary Character Death, Unsafe Sex, Violent Sex, but they also got better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:15:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26074009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingwide/pseuds/flyingwide
Summary: Nicolo knew the instant he was no longer alone, when a shadow dropped from an alleyway onto the road behind him. It was his favorite shadow, if he was honest with himself, and his blood was already rising at the thought of battle.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 30
Kudos: 349





	Until the Sun Sets on Nobody

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has stalked my days and tormented my mind and now I am throwing it into the void so that you may enjoy it. Please enjoy it.
> 
> Huge thanks to Amelia as always for making the Feelings better and stronger and holding my hand as I whined.
> 
> Title is from "Nobody" by Faith Marie.

Nicolo knew the instant he was no longer alone, when a shadow dropped from an alleyway onto the road behind him. It was his favorite shadow, if he was honest with himself, and his blood was already rising at the thought of battle.

They had done this dance, played this game, for a century now. One would find the other in whatever town they had found a home in. Often, one would die; sometimes both would. Rarely, they both walked away, interrupted or separated. Once, they had spent a day traveling together after they had tasted the other’s steel. Nicolo remembered the blazing heat of the desert, the silence aside from the wind that threatened to blast them raw and bleeding. He remembered bidding Yusuf farewell. A first.

There was a thought for a moment of leading Yusuf away, of not letting him see where Nicolo had hidden himself in this corner of Rome, but he discarded it. He would move on after anyway and the less chance of an audience they had for the violence to come, the better. The collateral damage wasn’t worth it.

Yusuf was fast, he always had been. Nicolo had barely crossed the threshold of his modest little room before there was a knife at his throat. Acting on reflex, Nicolo grabbed Yusuf’s wrist, breaking it in a swift movement that started with a quiet snap and ended with Yusuf’s bark of pain. He couldn’t help but jerk at the sharp pain, bending just slightly. Nicolo used the opening to slam his elbow back solidly into Yusuf’s nose. The bleeding started near instantly and Nicolo spun away, facing Yusuf for the first time. He had turned just in time to see Yusuf’s hunch of pain turn into a roll that ended with the short-bladed kilij in his hand, angled back so it laid perpendicular to his forearm.

“It’s been nearly two years,” Nicolo said in Arabic, watching Yusuf drag his free fist under his nose and seeing it come away bloody. Yusuf was dressed like a Roman workman. He’d been in town for a while.

“I’ve thought of you every day,” Yusuf taunted him in Greek. Nicolo’s eyes narrowed. “I’m one behind.” Nicolo knew instantly what he meant. He’d killed Yusuf thirty-nine times while Yusuf had managed to overpower him only thirty-eight. They’d both been keeping count.

“Childish,” Nicolo scoffed, answering him in Greek.

“Retributive,” Yusuf corrected. He lunged then and Nicolo was forced to dodge, drawing his own blade, a long dagger.

They circled each other slowly, Nicolo’s feet surer on familiar ground while Yusuf had less certainty. Nicolo was content to wait, knowing that Yusuf wouldn’t let himself be at a disadvantage for long. Sure enough, Yusuf lunged again and Nicolo parried it, their blades sliding together until the hilts locked. Yusuf was the stronger of the two and they both knew it. He would be watching for Nicolo to disengage. So instead, he twisted the opposite way, pulling Yusuf’s blade across his body by its join with the dagger. It left Yusuf’s kilij embedded in the thick wall and his body off-balance, right hand still on the hilt of the blade in the wall by Nicolo’s right ear. Nicolo brought his left knee up brutally, slamming it into Yusuf’s side hard enough that the man wheezed on impact. Still, he recovered fast so when Nicolo tried to take him to the ground, Yusuf rolled with the pressure and threw Nicolo over his head. Nicolo’s back hit the legs of his small spindly table and snapped them, the whole thing falling like splinters behind him.

Yusuf hadn’t yet got to his knees when Nicolo spotted where his dagger had ended up, glittering on the ground near the wall. Yusuf was closer to it but Nicolo was faster. He leaped across the room and had just stood with dagger in hand when Yusuf hit him with the force of an anvil, pushing his body against the wall even as he took out Nicolo’s wrist with pinpoint precision. The dagger dropped again, landing point-down in the dirt floor, and Nicolo was caught, chest heaving with the exertion, face-to-face with Yusuf who held a wrist in his left hand and Nicolo’s throat in the vise-tight grip of his right.

Neither said a word, staring into each other’s eyes as Yusuf’s thumb dug into his carotid. Nicolo licked his dry lips and watched Yusuf’s gaze drop down. Heat filled Nicolo from his fingertips to his face then back down to his--

Nerve endings lit up like sparks in every inch of his body as Yusuf pressed his mouth to Nicolo’s, who responded with enthusiasm. He’d never felt desire like this, like little shocks through his fingertips, his chest, his thighs, his throat… everywhere that Yusuf was touching him. Nicolo opened his mouth on instinct, wanting to take Yusuf in, to swallow him whole, to take him inside himself and never ever let him go.

This was right, Nicolo thought with the clarity of a summer sky above Romagnan hills. This was the culmination of decades of shared dreams and spilled blood as Nicolo opened himself up to Yusuf’s exploration. This was something inside of him shifting into place, an empty void he’d never dared to look at filling at the press of Yusuf’s body to his.

Yusuf bit Nicolo’s lip hard and he was sure they both tasted copper. Their blood mingled on their chins; Nicolo tried not to groan at the feeling but couldn’t help but undulate under Yusuf’s hand. His mind had gone fuzzy, the outside world had ceased to exist. All that was left was the two of them here, violence and obsession and bone-deep rightness. The moment Yusuf’s grip on Nicolo’s throat lessened, he shoved Yusuf back with his full strength, taking him out at the knee when he tried to regain his balance. Nicolo was on him in an instant, astride Yusuf’s prone form on the ground, moving his own hand to Yusuf’s throat. Lightning fast, Yusuf had the kilij pressed to the underside of Nicolo’s jaw and he swore; he’d lost sight of the blade in their scuffle and had thought Yusuf had dropped it.

“I think I like you bloody,” Yusuf whispered in Ligurian like a secret, eyes dancing in mirth as the tang of fresh blood hit the air and a drop of it rolled down the flat of the kilij. Nicolo hummed in answer as the purred words ran over him like warm water, bringing up goosebumps along his arms. He let go of Yusuf’s throat to sit up straight, watching the man between his thighs through narrowed eyes. Yusuf’s blade followed him up, Yusuf’s shoulders leaving the ground to keep the blade at Nicolo’s throat. The movement of their dance brought Nicolo’s ass to rest against Yusuf’s cock through their braies. Yusuf hissed and both his hand and hips jerked up, sending another trickle of blood dripping down and letting Nicolo feel how hard Yusuf was beneath him.

Nicolo wrapped his fingers over Yusuf’s on the grip of the kilij. Yusuf fought him for just a moment, making the blade sink into tender flesh just a bit more, before he let Nicolo control it, to drag the tip of it down his own throat and across his chest. It was wicked sharp and Nicolo felt delicate skin separate beneath it. He dragged it down until it rested between two ribs on his left side, just below his heart.

“If you press,” he said lightly in Arabic, “just here, it will take me minutes to bleed out.”

Yusuf’s groan came out in a rumble, accompanied by an upwards thrust of his hips that brought a tight exhale from Nicolo’s throat. “There is much I can do to you in minutes.”

“More weapons to impale me with?” Nicolo asked with an arched eyebrow and ground backwards to meet Yusuf’s next thrust. Yusuf laughed tightly, more of an exhale than a true laugh. His chest was heaving and Nicolo realized his own was as well, the slow slide of blood running down his throat tickling the skin as it went. He watched Yusuf eye the drop before sinking the blade millimeters in deeper, Nicolo’s fingers still wrapped around his on the hilt. Blood welled around the tip, not yet falling. Above it, the skin that their joined hands had sliced down Nicolo’s chest began to heal, pink new skin covering the long line in moments. Nicolo couldn’t help but twitch as he felt the skin around the blade embedded in his chest attempt to heal, cutting itself anew on the edge.

In an instant, Yusuf had the blade pulled out of Nicolo’s grasp and out of his chest and he threw it hard. Nicolo caught sight of it burying itself in the wall but that was all he had time to notice before Yusuf sat up. Wrapping his fingers around the backs of Nicolo’s knees, he pushed him up and back with such violence that the air left Nicolo’s lungs when his back hit the dirt floor. For a few long seconds, his lungs forgot how to breathe and it was long enough for Yusuf to be on him, insinuating himself between Nicolo’s legs and pressing down on him. Yusuf thrust himself forward and Nicolo gasped out what little air he’d managed to gain. With numb fingers, he reached out and grabbed a handful of Yusuf’s curls, pulling hard. Yusuf refused to be moved and instead leaned further into Nicolo’s body, pressing until they were chest to chest. Nicolo took in his first full breath and Yusuf bit down over Nicolo’s collarbone. Nicolo didn’t see it happen the second time, his head tipped back as he groaned. Every inch of him felt like it was on fire. This was right. This was right. Yusuf here, skin to skin, bloody and groaning and so alive…

Nicolo forced Yusuf’s head up, even as he pulled at the flesh caught between his teeth like a terrier. This time it was Nicolo who pressed their lips together; Yusuf groaned into his mouth and pushed himself up on his knees so that he could get their mouths lined up better. He pulled at Nicolo’s thigh as he went, holding their hips tight together. Nicolo rolled under him, offering himself up.

This was not surrender. If Yusuf once again tried for his life, Nicolo would not let it go unanswered. But this was what had always been lying under the violence, at the heart of it. This man was everything.

It took only a tight fist to Yusuf’s shirt to pull it from where it was tucked into his hose and braies and then it was off his shoulders and a new world of skin had been opened to Nicolo. Not one to be outdone, Yusuf ripped the laces at the collar of Nicolo’s shirt in his haste to get it off of him, Nicolo’s head knocking against the dirt with the violence of it. Yusuf did not hesitate a moment to begin working on the ties of Nicolo’s belt, pulling at the fabric roughly. Nicolo still had his fingers knotted in Yusuf’s hair and it made it difficult for him to reach low enough to pull Nicolo’s hose off of him.

Instead of pulling away, fighting cruelly like Nicolo had seen many times before, Yusuf surged up to press his mouth to Nicolo’s, prying between his teeth to taste him. He didn’t realize until after Yusuf had his hand free of Yusuf’s hair and pinned to the dirt by his own ear that he must have loosened his grip as he sunk into the kiss, that Yusuf had known that his kiss would melt him so thoroughly.

Anger pulsed through Nicolo, humiliation turning to rage the instant it formed. Yusuf was toying with him, making a fool of him. He kicked out at Yusuf but he only caught him by the ankle and pulled his boot off. Nicolo sat up, snarling, but Yusuf moved with the speed of a cobra, pressing his weight down on Nicolo with a hand on his throat and a knee on his stomach. They stared at each other for a long moment, Nicolo’s breathing shallow while Yusuf’s came fast and hard.

Then Yusuf’s free hand traced down Nicolo’s side with a gentleness that was jarring, so opposite was it to the fierce hold on him. Wide fingers, artist’s fingers, touched the top edge of Nicolo’s belt and paused. “Tell me to stop, Terror of Antioch. Tell me to unhand you, to let you go free, to never touch you again. If you say the word, Soldier of God, I will release you.”

Nicolo glared up at him, chest tight from more than his restricted air. “I am not frightened of you, Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Kaysani.”

“What do you feel for me?”

Those clever twisting fingers trailed from the bone of his hips over to the loosened fabric over his cock, tugged down just enough for the hair at the base of him to be visible. Yusuf’s fingers brushed through it until they hit the soft skin of him and Nicolo jerked his hips up. He was hard and had been, there was no point in denying it. “What do you feel for me?” Yusuf repeated as he pushed the thin fabric out of his way to grasp Nicolo’s cock. Nicolo’s world narrowed down to that exchange of skin, a fragile sensitive part of him held by his enemy, the first time in over a century he had felt the touch of another there. It was right that it should be Yusuf to do this first to the man Nicolo had become since his first death. Who else could it ever have been? Who else would he have ever wanted?

“I have not asked you to release me,” Nicolo rasped in Greek, the first language they had ever spoken together. The language they had accused each other in on that first rebirthing. Demon. Djinn. Monster. The language they had cursed each other in over death and battle, always wanting the other to hear, to understand.

Yusuf stopped, Nicolo’s cock still in his hand, as if he had forgotten what he had demanded of Nicolo. Then stars burst in Nicolo’s chest as air came rushing back in, Yusuf moving from his place atop Nicolo to instead pull his boot and hose and braies completely from him, leaving him bare and cold for just a moment before his weight was back on Nicolo. It was a different pressure now, no longer focused in two points as instead Yusuf draped himself over and between Nicolo, hiking one of Nicolo’s thighs over his hip as he thrust his clothed cock against the bare body beneath him. Nicolo threw his head back and sighed when he felt teeth in his skin.

A hand wormed its way between them, pulling at the edge of Yusuf’s belt until it was loose enough that they could be pushed down his hips. Nicolo helped Yusuf push them down, freeing his cock enough for it to slide between them, its hard length nudging at Nicolo’s balls as Yusuf thrust down against him.

Then they were chest to chest, nothing between them but skin. With a noise that sounded broken even in his own ears, Nicolo put a hand to Yusuf’s cheek to draw him into a kiss, deep and filthy but gentler than Yusuf had ever treated him. This was a lover’s kiss and something inside Nicolo’s chest cracked open, something he knew in his soul would never be closed again.

Yusuf thrust against him again, their cocks sliding together, and Yusuf broke the kiss to grunt into Nicolo’s shoulder. He moved to sit up, to pull away, but Nicolo’s hands grasped his shoulders, not letting him. He hadn’t consciously thought to move, to hold Yusuf to him, but there he was, clinging to him. 

“I need...” Yusuf started, casting about. He was no longer trying to pull away, just turning his head this way and that as if whatever he needed would jump into his hand if he caught a glimpse of it. Every movement caused a spark of friction between them, a moment of sharp feeling. Nicolo squeezed his knees into Yusuf’s side like he was guiding a horse, trying to arch into Yusuf’s body.

“What?” Nicolo asked breathlessly, all of his thoughts narrowed down to the place their hips met.

“Oil.”

It took him a few minutes for the simple word to register. “No,” Nicolo said firmly.

Yusuf frowned down at him, his hair falling down and framing his face. Nicolo was momentarily taken with the beauty of it, something out of ancient Greek reliefs. Something to build monuments of. He wanted to trace the lines of Yusuf’s face with his fingers until he could find him in the dark with touch alone. “Do you know what I-”

“Yes.” He was a Christian, not an imbecile, though Yusuf had told him before that they were interchangeable terms. Of course he knew what Yusuf desired. “You don’t need it.”

Nicolo set his jaw when Yusuf’s frown deepened. “It will hurt,” Yusuf warned.

“I don’t care.” As if pain had ever stopped them, as if Yusuf didn’t have a knife embedded in Nicolo’s skin not minutes before, as if they hadn’t started with an attempt on his life.  _ Hurt _ , indeed.

“It will hurt  _ me _ .”

Nicolo couldn’t help but snort as he clutched Yusuf closer. “I don’t care.”

Yusuf didn’t look impressed with him. Nicolo arched his back in response, bringing their hips together. Yusuf pulled back as far as he could in Nicolo’s hold. “Suppose I care,” Yusuf said placidly.

“More than you want in me?” Nicolo asked with an arched eyebrow. Yusuf’s lip curled with the little snarl that snuck through clenched teeth and then Nicolo couldn’t see it anymore, Yusuf’s mouth on the underside of Nicolo’s jaw as his full weight rested on the body beneath his. Nicolo cried out, no point in pretending he wanted anything but this.

Pushing their hips together over and over, the fire within him grew. How had they never done this before? How had he lived before he had Yusuf’s body pressed to his, before he could feel their hearts beating in time? How would he live without him again?

Yusuf shifted them, hiking Nicolo’s hips up until his cock dragged against Nicolo’s hole with every thrust. It was so close and yet so so far from what he wanted and his only thought was to drag Yusuf impossibly closer, as if pressing their mouths together, letting his tongue invade him, would hasten his entry in other places. Yusuf pulled away from the kiss, replacing his mouth immediately with two of his fingers, dragging Nicolo’s jaw down and open. Nicolo licked at them as best as he could until Yusuf loosened his pull and let Nicolo suck on them. Yusuf’s skin tasted of sweat and blood and Nicolo could have drowned in it.

Too soon, Yusuf took his fingers away and Nicolo let his head fall back to the ground, his breathing heavy as his chest heaved. He groaned out loud as Yusuf’s hand moved to the small of his back, the only warning he got before Yusuf yanked his hips up off the ground, pressing his wet fingers to the rim of Nicolo’s hole with the precision that he had come to expect from the other man.

Unceremoniously, he pressed two fingers inside Nicolo at once and Nicolo muffled his scream in Yusuf’s shoulder, both of them bowed together as Yusuf worked his way inside him. Yusuf had been right; it did hurt. He had had deaths that came with less feeling than this, his body overcome. But it didn’t hurt enough to stop, it would never hurt enough to stop. Hurting was what they did best and this, this was right in a way that felt like ecstasy. This felt like the Word of God tearing through him, the Word made flesh moving above and in him. He wasn’t sure the thought made sense and outside of the haze of lust, he would maybe be ashamed of his blaspheming. But he could not regret it, not as Yusuf became to move his fingers, to spread and twist and thrust. Neither could he stop the noises pulled from his throat, muffled against Yusuf’s skin even as Yusuf groaned in his ear.

Yusuf pulled his fingers from Nicolo sharply; Nicolo, in response, dug his blunt nails into Yusuf’s shoulder until red ran at the edges. He grunted but didn’t try to dislodge Nicolo, just pulled away as much as he was able to spit in his hand before running it up and down his cock, once, twice, and then he was pushing inside the space that his fingers had just been.

Nicolo had assumed that the preparation would have been sufficient for him to not feel like the first press inside had. He could not have been more wrong. Yusuf’s cock was wide, felt impossibly wider inside him than it had looked in his hand, and Nicolo could feel himself shaking even as he pressed one ankle against Yusuf’s thigh, begging without words for him to move.

Slowly, so slowly, Yusuf sunk into him and Nicolo felt like he would fly apart at the seams. Maybe this is what would kill him for good, he thought nonsensically with his heart pounding in his ears. Maybe he would die pinned here, overwhelmed and overcome. And then Yusuf pulled most of the way out just to slam back in and thoughts left him.

There was nothing but this. There would never be anything but this again.

Everything was sensation: the hard-packed earth pressing against his shoulder blades and spine, the grit of dirt knocked loose in his hair, Yusuf’s hands pressing bruises that wouldn’t stay long enough for Nicolo to ever see into his hips, the flex of Yusuf’s hips against his knees and thighs, the slide of Nicolo’s cock over the hard planes and slight give of Yusuf’s belly, the skin of Yusuf’s back beneath his fingertips, the tickle of his hair on Nicolo’s face, the taste of his neck and jaw on Nicolo’s tongue, and above all, deep inside him, Yusuf making a space for himself into Nicolo. Body, soul, heart. All given freely, all freely taken.

Eventually, it occurred to Nicolo that Yusuf’s thrusts were coming harder, shorter, quicker and he didn't have to wonder what it meant. Arousal was a roiling feeling low in his belly, close to spilling over, and he knew Yusuf was much the same. Nicolo put a hand to the side of Yusuf’s face, to guide him up from where he was breathing against Nicolo’s chest, his forehead pressed to Nicolo’s collarbone. He opened his mouth under Yusuf’s as he pressed them together, wanting to be tangled together as much as possible when Yusuf came inside him.

One soul, one flesh.

They groaned against each other as Yusuf began to spill inside him, Nicolo clenching around him as his own climax hit him mere moments later. They shakily thrust together as they came down, the haze of arousal fading slowly like fog in the harbor as the sun rose in the sky.

Yusuf pushed himself up on trembling arms as he looked down at Nicolo, whose body he was still sheathed in. The sun, Nicolo thought hazily, reaching up to press soft fingertips to Yusuf’s cheekbones, his jaw, his mouth. He felt drunk. He felt raw and trembling like an exposed nerve. He didn’t know what he felt but he knew he never wanted it to leave.

They looked at each other, eyes locking. Yusuf’s eyes fluttered and his brow crumpled, emotions flashing over his face too quick for Nicolo to read, not as strung out as he was. 

Nicolo’s hips and shoulders ached, he realized belatedly. But he couldn’t make himself care with Yusuf over him, his spend inside him, and Nicolo’s own cooling between their bodies. It should have been disgusting. It should have never been something he desired, certainly nothing he let himself have. He had given his body to this man who he had called enemy.

Nicolo had never felt more contented in his life.

He groaned and let his head fall back when Yusuf pulled out of him. It was an uncomfortable feeling, being empty after being filled had felt so right. But mostly, he knew that Yusuf would leave, that he would walk out that door and it would be months, if not years, before Nicolo saw him again.

“Do you do that often?” Yusuf asked as he stood, pulling his hose up his legs, wrapping it deftly around his belt, and Nicolo blinked at him, yanked from his thoughts.

“What?”

Yusuf gestured at Nicolo’s prone form. “Whatever it is that we just did. Is that a trick that you use on men often?”

Nicolo pushed himself up on his elbows to glare at Yusuf, carrying no shame as Yusuf’s eyes traveled up his naked form. “What trick do you imagine was used on you? You kissed me first.”

“A lapse of judgement, a moment of weakness, that you used to your advantage.”

“To my advantage? Do you think I debase myself for my enemies to some sort of profit?” Yusuf opened his mouth but Nicolo cut him off. “You walk in my dreams, thoughts of you fill my days, and you dare to ask if there is anyone else.”

Yusuf opened his mouth to respond, his eyes wide with something like hurt, and then stopped, closing it again. They started at each other for long moments, replaying the decades between them. That time in the desert when Nicolo had wondered if Yusuf would rise again after taking too long, the time that he had healed around the knife Yusuf stuck in his chest, the time that Nicolo had taken his sword to the back of Yusuf’s knees before shoving the tip between Yusuf’s shoulder blades, the day they had met within Jerusalem’s walls and thought that it was the end of them.

The end. Nicolo couldn’t let this be the end.

“We’re right,” he said desperately. His breathing picked up and he could hear the edge of a sob in it. He needed Yusuf to understand this. “You and I. We’re right together, made for one another. There is no one but you. You cannot tell me that you didn’t feel it too.”

Yusuf swallowed hard, Adam’s apple bobbing. His eyes had never been hard, not even in his hatred, but there was a softness that Nicolo hadn’t expected. “I don’t feel anything anymore,” Yusuf said, his jaw set.

Nicolo slapped an open palm onto the ground below him. “You’re not as hard as all that!” he said sharply and Yusuf frowned at him, just short of glaring.

“You don’t know anything.”

“I know you. I will know you for however long we live. You are a part of me just as I am a part of you. We were given this immortality for a reason and that reason cannot lead us apart.”

“How do you know?” Yusuf said, voice flinty. “Did your god give you answers that mine cannot?”

“I don’t need answers from on high to know that my place is at your side.”

Yusuf turned away sharply with a shake of his head. “If only to twist a knife into it.”

“I’m tired of hurting you! Aren’t you tired? Are you not ready to end this violence, senseless and unceasing? Is this how you mean to spend your immortality, hunting me down to kill me again and again?”

“What difference does it make? It is unending. We will dance this dance until the end of days.”

“We don’t have to!” Nicolo shut his eyes for a moment, the fight leaving him exhausted suddenly. “We don’t have to. We can choose to end this enmity. We can choose to be better.”

Yusuf didn’t turn, didn’t so much as glance over his shoulder, before he slammed out of the door and into the street. The light was orange with the glow of dusk and then Yusuf was gone into it.

  
  
  


It had been three months and Nicolo had moved from Rome to Kavala, a Macedonian city still reeling from attacks and bracing for more. He wanted to believe he could help, at the very least dragging the injured from the front lines. He was put to use in odd jobs throughout the city, this strange foreigner with his archaic Greek. He liked it, being useful. He liked his walks through the city, the people who had learned to know him. It was just past dusk and he was headed home, his head was too full of what had happened, of what was to come.

Nicolo reacted too late, turning on his heel to find a familiar --beloved-- figure laying in wait.

An ambush, then.

There was a firm hand in his hair, angling his head down. Big, strong, nimble fingers. Quicker than he could react, Nicolo felt the blade, curved and wicked sharp, slit his throat with the expertise of experience. Light burst behind his eyes and everything hurt until it didn’t. Feeling left his extremities first as his knees weakened and buckled. He was choking on his own blood, trying to gasp air through the gaping hole where his trachea had been, when Yusuf caught him in his arms, crimson soaking both of them. There was too much blood between them, on their clothing, on their hands, on their faces. Both would come away drenched.

Nicolo didn’t mind so much. He’d been this way before; it was a familiar death. The pain faded quickly as his vision dimmed. He was looking up into Yusuf’s eyes, held firm to his chest, when the dark closed around him.

He thought that maybe Yusuf had looked at him with affection. Maybe he had been hallucinating.

When he woke, he was laid out on a bedroll. His own. Of course. Just as he had found Yusuf in many a hiding place, so too had Yusuf found him.

Yusuf was sitting at his feet, one knee up to his chest while the other laid straight in front of him. He looked comfortable in Byzantine dress as he waited for Nicolo to rise. He was watching Nicolo come to consciousness, expression patient. Nicolo wondered how long he had been gone. There was quickly drying blood soaking the front of Yusuf’s tunic and Nicolo felt no sympathy at all.

“I liked this shirt,” he said in Arabic eventually and Yusuf grinned, a shining thing. Perhaps the affection hadn’t been a hallucination.

“Unfortunate,” he told Nicolo, remorseless. Nicolo shook his head, flinching at the way the tacky blood in his hair clung to everything it touched.

“Are you satisfied?” Nicolo asked, annoyance fading from him quickly. The blood was drying sticky on his skin and there would be no salvaging of his clothes or bedroll. Money had been tight, especially when he was refraining from pickpocketing. But he’d give up all and more if Yusuf were to keep smiling down at him. “We are even now.”

“Even? Were we keeping score?” Yusuf teased.

Nicolo ignored the question, sitting up slowly. “I’m tired of hurting you,” he said, looking into Yusuf’s eyes. “I am tired of watching you die.”

Yusuf’s smile faded and his brow crumpled. He looked… wounded. But then it smoothed into something passive, something Nicolo hated in comparison to all the complex emotions he’s seen in Yusuf’s face. “You wish to be done with one another.”

The words hurt worse than the blade had and it stuck in his throat much longer. Unconsciously, his hand shot out to clamp down on Yusuf’s wrist. “I have no wish to be done with you,” he said fervently, knuckles white with the strength of his grip. Yusuf looked down at his wrist and then back up at Nicolo’s face. “I told you before. I want you at my side. I want to have your back while you have mine, neither of us fearing a knife.”

Yusuf shook his head and the invisible knife within Nicolo twisted. “I can’t.”

“You can.”

“I will drown in you,” Yusuf said, sounding like the words were torn from him. There was a hunch to his shoulders that looked like pain and Nicolo’s chest tightened until he could barely breathe. “If I am not careful, if I do not guard myself from you, you will overtake me like the crash of a wave and I will lose myself in you.”

Nicolo didn’t know what to say but his eyes prickled with tears that burned and stung. Nicolo leaned towards him, seeking his touch, and Yusuf swayed closer before pulling back sharply, tugging Nicolo with him by the grip he still had on Yusuf’s wrist.

“I will not seek you out again.”

“I will find you,” Nicolo said immediately, vehemently. “No matter where you go, I will find you again.”

“It’s a big world. Lot of places to hide.”

“Not from me.” It was an oath, a pledge. He would have sworn it on his soul. “Never from me.”

Yusuf tilted his head back and ran his right hand over his face, his left still firmly in Nicolo’s grasp. “Why will you not let me go?”

“For the same reason you are here. I will not try to convince you of what you already know is true.”

Yusuf laughed, a hard and bitter sound. He yanked his held wrist towards his chest and Nicolo dragged it back towards him, glaring. “Do you imagine we are soulmates? That one quick and desperate fuck means that we will be lovers until the Day of Judgement?”

The words were aimed to hurt and they did. Nicolo did not loosen his grip. “That is not why.” A few minutes of intimacy, as glorious as they were, paled in comparison of decades of awareness, of knowledge. He held Yusuf’s gaze. “You asked me what I felt for you and I did not answer. I feel like you are clarity in chaos. In this lifetime, in our last, in all the ones that will come, you are the only thing that I can be sure of. You are righteous and fierce and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. My place is with you, until the day that all of this ends.” Yusuf closed his eyes and dropped his head, left hand flexing and releasing, the muscles of his arm shifting beneath Nicolo’s fingers. Nicolo swallowed hard, heart hammering in his chest. “What do you feel for me?”

When Yusuf opened his eyes again, he looked at Nicolo. He looked terrified. Nicolo’s heart clenched and he almost didn’t notice Yusuf moving towards him until he went up on his knees, his left hand moving to cradle Nicolo’s cheek. And then he kissed him with all of the strength he had. Every emotion ever felt flowed through Nicolo in that moment, the passion of many lifetimes running through him like seawater, like lightning. He felt whole. There was wetness on his cheeks, though he couldn’t say if they were Yusuf’s tears or his own. Yusuf’s other hand came up to hold Nicolo’s face and when they separated, he pressed his forehead to Nicolo’s.

_ You are everything _ , he wanted to say but didn’t.

_ I love you _ , he wanted to say but couldn’t.

“Stay,” he said instead and Yusuf did.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second fic where I've had to say in the notes, "Please don't fuck people dry, it hurts and it runs the risk of infection," and yet it's still made its way in. I am who I am and I'm not sorry.
> 
> A note about languages. So they switch fairly frequently here because they spent the last hundred-odd years bouncing around the planet picking up new languages and hell, wouldn't you? But a note about the Greek because I think it's funny: Nicky, being in the Church, would have learned ecclesiastical Greek where Joe's would have been more Mediterranean dockside market Greek that he'd picked up on his travels. They could understand each other when they first met but it would be like having a conversation with the King James Bible and I find that image hilarious. Nicky’s gotten better by the time this fic is set but it’s still instinct to fall back on what he first learned.
> 
> As always, you can yell at me on tumblr as flyingwide or on twitter as berryreaction!


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